The Charlemagne Pursuit

by Steve Berry

  followed the same trail, why would anything be here now? Isabel said that he first came in the late 1930s, before he traveled to Antarctica, then returned in the early 1950s. Her husband came in 1970.

  Yet nobody knew a thing?

  Light danced outside the church, growing in intensity. Christl returned, shovel in hand.

  He grabbed the handle, surrendered his light, and wedged the metal blade into one joint. Just as he suspected, the ground was like concrete. He raised the shovel and slammed the point down hard, working the blade back and forth.

  After several blows he began to make progress and the ground gave way.

  He again spiked the shovel into the joint and managed to wiggle it beneath, working the wooden handle like a fulcrum, loosening the stone from the earth’s embrace.

  He withdrew the shovel and did the same thing on the other sides.

  Finally, the slab began to wobble. He pried it upward, angling the handle.

  “Hold the shovel,” he told her. He dropped down and worked his gloved hands underneath, freeing the edges from the ground.

  Both flashlights lay beside him. He lifted one and saw that only dirt was visible.

  “Let me try,” she said.

  She kneaded the hard ground with short jabs, twisting the blade, working deeper. She hit something. She withdrew the shovel and he stirred the loose dirt, scooping out cold earth until he saw the top of what at first looked like a rock, but then he realized it was flat.

  He brushed away the remaining dirt.

  Carved in the center of a rectangular shape, clear and distinct, was Charlemagne’s signature. He cleared more earth from the sides and realized that he was looking at a stone reliquary. Maybe sixteen inches long, ten inches wide. He worked his hands down either side and discovered that it was about six inches tall.

  He lifted it out.

  Christl bent down. “It’s Carolingian. The style. Design. Marble. And, of course, the signature.”

  “You want the honor?” he asked.

  A blissful half grin claimed her mouth and she grasped the sides and lifted. The reliquary parted in the middle, the bottom portion framing the shape of something wrapped in oilcloth.

  He lifted out the sheathed bundle and untied the drawstrings.

  Carefully, he opened the bag as Christl shone a light inside.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  ASHEVILLE

  STEPHANIE DESCENDED THE STAIRCASE, WHICH TURNED AT RIGHTangles until it found the château’s

  basement.

  Davis was waiting at the bottom. “Took you long enough.” He wrenched the gun from her grasp. “I need that.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Like I said, kill the piece of crap.”

  “Edwin, we don’t even know who he is.”

  “He saw me and he ran.”

  She needed to take control, as Daniels had instructed her to do. “How did he know you? Nobody saw us last night, and we didn’t see him.”

  “I don’t know, Stephanie, but he did.”

  The man had run, which was suspicious, but she wasn’t ready to order a death sentence.

  Footsteps came from behind and a uniformed security guard appeared. He saw the gun in Davis’ grasp and reacted, but she was ready and produced her Magellan Billet identification. “We’re federal agents and we have someone of interest down here. He fled. How many exits from this floor?”

  “Another staircase on the far side. Several doors to the outside.”

  “Can you cover those?”

  He hesitated a moment, then apparently decided they were for real and unclipped a radio from his waist, instructing others on what to do.

  “We need to get this guy, if he comes out a window. Anywhere. Understand?” she asked. “Put men outside.”

  The man nodded and gave more instructions then said, “The tour group is out and in the buses. The house is empty, except for you.”

  “And him,” Davis said, moving off.

  The guard wasn’t armed. Too bad. But she did notice in his shirt pocket one of the brochures she’d seen others in the tour group carrying. She pointed. “Is there a sketch of this floor in there?”

  The guard nodded. “One of all four floors.” He handed it to her.“This is the basement. Recreation, kitchens, servants’

  quarters, storage. Lots of places to hide.”

  Which she didn’t want to hear. “Call the local police. Get them over here. Then cover this stairway. This guy could be dangerous.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “That’s the whole problem. We don’t know crap.”

  MALONE SAW A BOOK INSIDE THE BAG AND A PALE BLUE ENVELOPEprotruding near its center. He

  reached in and removed the book.

  “Lay the bag on the floor,” he said, and he gently rested the book atop, grabbing his light.

  Christl slipped the envelope free and opened it, finding two sheets of paper. She unfolded them. Both were filled by a heavy masculine script—German—in black ink.

  “It’s Grandfather’s writing. I’ve read his notebooks.”

  STEPHANIE HURRIED AFTERDAVIS AND CAUGHT UP TO HIM WHEREthe basement corridors offered a

  choice, one angling left, the other straight ahead. Glass-fronted doors opened off the path ahead into what looked like food pantries. She quickly checked the map. At the end of the hall she identified the main kitchen.

  She heard a noise. From their left.

  The schematic in the pamphlet indicated that the path ahead led to servants’ bedrooms and did not connect with any other portion of the basement. A dead end.

  Davis headed down the long corridor to their left, toward the noise.

  They passed through an exercise room with parallel bars, barbells, medicine balls, and a rowing machine. To their right they found the indoor swimming pool, everything, including the vault overhead, white-tiled, with no windows, only harsh electric light. No water filled the deep shiny basin.

  A shadow swept across the pool room’s other exit.

  They rounded the railed walk, Davis leading the way.

  She checked the map. “This is the only way out from the rooms beyond. Besides the main staircase, but hopefully the security guards have that covered.”

  “Then we’ve got him. He has to come back this way.”

  “Or he’s got us.”

  Davis stole a quick look at the map, then they passed through a doorway and down a few short steps. He gave her the gun. “I’ll wait.” He pointed left. “That hall loops all the way around and ends back here.”

  A sick feeling filled her gut. “Edwin, this is crazy.”

  “Just flush him this way.” A tremor shook his right eye. “I have to do this. Send him my way.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  She nodded, searching for the right words, but she understood his intense desire. “Okay.”

  He retreated up the stairs they’d come from.

  She advanced to the left and, at the main staircase leading up, spotted another security guard. He shook his head to indicate that no one had come his way. She nodded and pointed that she was headed left.

  Two meandering, windowless corridors led her into a long rectangular room filled with historical exhibits and black-and-white photographs. The walls were painted in a collage of colorful images. The Halloween Room. She’d recalled a mention in the pamphlet about how guests at a 1920s Halloween party painted the walls.

  She spotted Chinos, on the far side, weaving through the exhibits, heading for the only other exit.

  “Stop,” she yelled.

  He kept moving.

  She aimed and fired.

  Her ears stung from the gun’s retort. The bullet found one of the display placards. She wasn’t trying to hit the man, only scare him. But Chinos lunged through the doorway and kept running.

  She followed.

  She’d caught only a fleeting glance of the man, so it was imposs
ible to know if he was armed.

  She passed through a recreation room and entered a bowling alley, two lanes equipped with wood planking, balls, and pins. Had to be quite a convenience in the late nineteenth century.

  She decided to try something.

  “What’s the point in running?” she called out. “There’s nowhere to go. The house is sealed.”

  Silence.

  Small dressing rooms opened to her left, one door after another. She imagined proper ladies and gentleman a hundred years ago changing into recreation clothes. The corridor ahead ended back where Davis waited near the swimming pool.

  She’d already made the loop.

  “Just come on out,” she said. “You’re not getting to leave here.”

  She sensed he was near.

  Suddenly, twenty feet away, something appeared from one of the dressing rooms.

  A bowling pin, propelled at her, swooshing through the air like a boomerang.

  She ducked.

  The pin thudded into the wall behind her and clattered away.

  Chinos made his escape.

  She recovered her balance and darted forward. At the corridor’s end she peered around. No one in sight. She rushed to the steps and climbed the risers back into the pool room. Chinos was across, at the shallow end, where the door for the exercise room opened, rushing away. She raised her gun and aimed for his legs. But before she could fire, Davis exploded from the doorway and tackled him. They slammed into the wooden railing that surrounded the pool, which instantly gave way, and the two bodies fell three feet into the pool’s empty shallow end.

  Flesh and bones smacked hard tile.

  SIXTY-NINE

  To my son, this may be the last sane act I ever do. My mind is rapidly slipping into a deep fog. I have tried to resist but with no success. Before my wits fully leave me, I must do this. If you are reading these words then you have successfully completed Charlemagne’s pursuit. God bless you. Know that I am proud. I also sought and discovered the lasting heritage of our great Aryan ancestors. I knew they existed. I told my Führer, tried to convince him that his vision of our past was inaccurate, but he would not listen. That greatest of kings, the man who first foresaw a unified continent, Charlemagne, knew well our destiny. He appreciated what the Holy Ones taught him. He knew they were wise and he listened to their counsel. Here, in this sacred earth, Einhard hid the key to the language of heaven. Einhard was taught by the High Adviser himself, and he safeguarded what he was privileged to know. Imagine my ecstasy, over a thousand years later, at being the first to know what Einhard knew, what Charlemagne knew, what we, as Germans, have to know. But not a single soul appreciated what I’d discovered. I was, instead, branded dangerous, deemed unstable, and forever silenced. After the war, no one cared about our German heritage. To speak the word Aryan was to invoke memories of atrocities no one wanted to recall. That sickened me. If they only knew. If they’d only seen. As I had. My son, if you have come this far it is because of what I told you of Charlemagne’s pursuit. Einhard made clear that neither he nor the Holy Ones have any patience with ignorance. Neither do I, my son. You have provedme right and proven yourself worthy. Now you can know the language of heaven. Savor it. Marvel at the place from which we came.

  “YOUR MOTHER SAIDHERMANN CAME HERE THE SECOND TIME INthe early 1950s,” Malone said. “Your

  father would have been in his thirties then?”

  Christl nodded. “He was born in 1921. Died at fifty.”

  “So Hermann Oberhauser brought back what he’d found, replaced it, so his son could take up the pursuit.”

  “Grandfather was a man of strange ideas. For the last fifteen years of his life, he never left Reichshoffen. He knew none of us when he died. He barely ever spoke to me.”

  He recalled more of what Isabel had told him. “Your mother said that Dietz came here after Hermann died. But he apparently found nothing, since the book is here.” He realized what that meant. “So he really did go to Antarctica knowing nothing.”

  She shook her head. “He had Grandfather’s maps.”

  “You saw them. There was no writing. Like you said in Aachen, maps are useless without notations.”

  “But he had Grandfather’s notebooks. There’s information there.”

  He pointed to the book lying on the oilcloth. “Your father needed this to know what Hermann knew.”

  He wondered why the navy had agreed to such a foolish journey. What had Dietz Oberhauser promised? What had they hoped to gain?

  His ears were numb from the cold.

  He stared at the cover. The same symbol from the one found in Charlemagne’s grave had been stamped into the top.

  He opened the ancient tome. In shape, size, and coloration it was nearly identical to the two he’d already seen. Inside was the same odd script, with additions.

  “Those curlicues from the other book are letters,” he said, noting that each page contained a way to convert the alphabet into Latin. “It’s a translation of the language of heaven.”

  “We can do it,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mother had Charlemagne’s book electronically scanned. A year ago she hired some linguists and tried to have it deciphered. They, of course, failed since it’s not in any known language. I anticipated this, realizing that whatever was here had to be a way to translate the book. What else could it have been? Yesterday Mother gave me the electronic images. I have a translation program that should work. All we’d have to do is scan these pages into it.”

  “Tell me you have the laptop with you.”

  She nodded. “Mother brought it from Reichshoffen. Along with a scanner.”

  Finally, something had gone right.

  STEPHANIE COULD DO LITTLE.DAVIS ANDCHINOS WERE ROLLINGdeeper into the empty pool, across the

  slick white tiles to the flat bottom of its deep end, eight feet below her.

  They crashed into the lower portion of a wooden ladder, which led up to a platform that would have been submerged when the pool had been filled. Another three steps led from the platform up to her level.

  Davis shoved Chinos off him, then sprang to his feet, swinging around to block any escape. Chinos seem to suffer a moment of indecision, whipping his head left and right, realizing they were encased in an unusual arena.

  Davis shucked his coat.

  Chinos accepted the challenge and did the same.

  She wanted to stop this, but knew Davis would never forgive her. Chinos looked maybe forty to Davis’ late fifties, but anger could even the odds.

  She heard the sound of a fist meeting bone as Davis caught Chinos full on the jaw, sending him spiraling to the tiles.

  The man immediately recovered and pounced, planting a foot into Davis’ gut.

  She heard the wind leave him.

  Chinos danced in and out, delivering quick sharp blows, ending with a jab into Davis’ breastbone.

  Davis, off balance, spun around. Just as he gathered his coordination and tried to swing again, Chinos lunged forward and smacked him in the Adam’s apple. Davis threw a right cross that connected only with air.

  A prideful smirk crept across Chinos’ face.

  Davis dropped to his knees, leaning forward, as if praying, head bowed, arms at his sides. Chinos stood ready. She heard Davis catch his breath. Her mouth went dry. Chinos stepped closer, seemingly intent on finishing the fight. But Davis summoned all his reserves and lurched upward, tackling his opponent, planting his head into the man’s ribs.

  Bone cracked.

  Chinos howled in pain and fell to the tiles.

  Davis pummeled the man.

  Blood gushed from Chinos’ nose and splattered on the tiles. His arms and legs went limp. Davis kept peppering him with hard, sharp punches from a closed fist.

  “Edwin,” she called out.

  He didn’t seem to listen.

  “Edwin,” she screamed.

  He stopped. Breath wheezed from him, but he did not move.

&n
bsp; “It’s done,” she said.

  Davis shot her a murderous look.

  He finally crawled off his opponent and came to his feet, but his knees immediately weakened and he stumbled. He straightened one arm and caught himself, tried to remain standing, but couldn’t.